System and Method for the Generation of Navigation Graphs in Real-Time

1. A system adapted for generating navigation graphs in real time, the system comprising: a dictionary operable to maintain information mapping surface features to navigational costs; a graphical module operable to transform geometrical data of a virtual world and associated navigational costs obtained from the dictionary into navigation data; a graph-generation module operable to translate the navigation data into a semi-generated navigation graph; and a physical module operable to receive the semi-generated navigation graph, and generate an updated navigation graph based on collisions test.

2. The system of claim 1 , further comprising: a pre-graph module adapted for determining which parts of the virtual world have changed; and a post-graph module adapted for minimizing the size of the updated navigation graph.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the graphical module is coupled to a rendering subsystem.

4. The system of claim 3 , wherein the transforming the geometrical data into navigation data comprises: receiving geometrical data of at least one region in the virtual world; and rendering, using the rendering subsystem, a plurality of bitmaps, which form the navigation data.

5. The system of claim 4 , wherein the geometrical data comprises polygons describing at least objects, surfaces and obstacles in the region.

6. The system of claim 5 , wherein the plurality of bitmaps include information about properties of a terrain in the region.

7. The system of claim 4 , wherein the graph-generation module produces the semi-generated navigation graph by translating the bitmaps into nodes, edges and weights.

8. The system of claim 7 , wherein translation decisions are performed based on the mapping information in the dictionary.

9. The system of claim 7 , wherein the graph-generation module marks areas in the semi-generated navigation graph that can not be inferred from the bitmaps.

10. The system of claim 9 , wherein the physical engine performs the collision tests on the marked areas.

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein the physical module is further operable to update the mapping information based on results of the collision tests.

12. A method for generating a navigation graph in real-time, the method comprising: retrieving geometrical data of at least one region in a virtual world of a computer game; retrieving mapping information for said at least one region; rendering a plurality of bitmaps of navigation data using the geometrical data and the mapping information; generating a semi-generated graph using the bitmaps; and generating the navigation graph based on collision tests performed on the semi-generated graph pre-processing the at least one region to determine changes in the at least one region wherein the navigation graph comprises navigation data for a game agent in the virtual world.

13. The method of claim 12 , further comprising: post-processing the generated navigation graph to reduce its size.

14. The method of claim 12 , wherein the geometrical data comprises polygons describing at least objects, surfaces and obstacles in the at least one region.

15. The method of claim 12 , wherein the plurality of bitmaps include information about properties of a terrain in the region.

16. The method of claim 12 , wherein the generating the semi-generated graph comprises: translating the bitmaps into nodes, edges and weights of a graph; and marking areas in the semi-generated graph that can not be inferred from the bitmaps.

17. The method of claim 16 , wherein translating the bitmaps is performed based on the mapping information.

18. The method of claim 17 , wherein the collision tests are performed on marked areas in the semi-generated graph.

19. The method of claim 17 , wherein the mapping information comprises mapping of surface features to navigational costs.

20. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions to enable a computer to execute a method for generating a navigation graph in real-time, the method comprising: retrieving geometrical data of at least one region in a virtual world of a computer game; retrieving mapping information for said at least one region; rendering a plurality of bitmaps of navigation data based on the geometrical data and the mapping information; generating a semi-generated graph based on the bitmaps; and generating a navigation graph based on collision tests performed on the semi-generated graph.